September 2009 – Secretly Ironic

Not quite weekly poetry update

Here’s the latest, continuing in the vein of writing about things and people I see on the way to or from work:

When the voice speaks

How’s a dreadlocked and wrinkled Caribbean woman
wind up outside the subway in Boston
dancing and swaying in cowboy boots with
“Everybody Loves An Irish Girl?” printed on her shirt?

How’d you come three thousand miles to wind up
holding a cup of change and five or eight creased cardboard signs
block-printed small and crammed with text that nobody pauses to read?

I ask what it says and she says, softly
“which one, honey?”
The sign tied to her forehead begins
SEEK ENLIGHTENED GIVER SEND DONATION TO UNIVERSE –
ATTN VIP TAXPAYER BACK BAY BOSTON –
I can’t tell what she means, what she needs
apart from cash and Risperdal.
But I know what she’s telling me: when the voice speaks
you have to listen.

A Brief Trip To Free-Market Paradise of State-Owned Enterprises

On the way back from a wedding in Deerfield, the lady and I decided we’d swing by New Hampshire and check out the prices at the libertarian liquor store. Of course, we realized only after several miles of deserted, potholed highway that the store in Winchester NH was closed on Sundays. We tried to see if other stores might be open, but there was no cell service! No 3G, no Edge, nothing!

(Now that I’m back in-network, I’ve learned that some of the other locations are indeed open Sundays. Just not the one we dropped by. Poor planning, that.)

On the bumpy ride back toward Athol, I got to thinking. People here in the nanny state to the south love to complain about socialism. But in tax-free New Hampshire, home of limited government, it’s the state that decides when liquor stores are open. Not through zoning or neighborhood input to set regulations, the way we do it here. The state liquor board picks where the stores are, when to open them, what goods are sold, and how to price them. If socialism is state ownership of businesses, New Hampshire is the most socialistic state we’ve got up here. Sure, the Mass lotto is state-run, but tickets are sold in a variety of places, which can compete on convenience and amenities if not on price. Only in New Hampshire does the state actually own and operate such a major business that is, elsewhere, left entirely to private enterprise.

What’s this world coming to?

“What should we name after Ted Kennedy?”

People have been asking that, of course, for several weeks now. Since even before his death. They’re naming a school and maybe a health-care bill. But how about a bridge or a stadium?

One of my friends suggested naming the Cape Wind project after him. After all, now that he’s gone, they can build it, right?

Weekly poem: Adequate Expectations

Adequate expectations
The papers had the notice prepped for weeks,
An evergreen for interns since sixty-nine
polished by senior staff this month and last
and the one before.

The old man himself, I’m sure, offered
more than a few suggestions.
His fans, old lovers, enemies –
all readied signs to hold some time last year.

And so, through fervent preparation,
death finally came, and with it the expected rituals
of expected death, and prayers:
let us believe we know what’s next,
let us believe we’ve years yet left to be.